Today, we spent the day up in Inwood, which is on the upper tip of Manhattan. The last couple of years, we’ve come up here during the fall, when all of the leaves are changing color and there are large swaths of gold, red, and orange leaves scattered all over the ground. We all enjoy stepping on crunchy leaves at this time of year, but unfortunately it has rained the last couple of days, so instead of crunchy, they were all soggy. It still made for some picturesque walking and some good photos, though.
After all the years of coming up here, we finally decided to enter the Inwood public library branch. Just two years ago, this branch was fully redone and renovated, so it looks quite shiny from the outside. We spent a good amount of time inside looking at the endless variety of children’s books, all so multicultural in many languages. I always think about this when I think about children’s books now, but the representation is so much greater now than it was when I was a young child. The interior, as we imagined, was really well done: spacious, well laid out, with lots of floor to ceiling windows and natural light.
A separated children’s reading room can be accessed through double doors from the main children’s area. Kaia insisted on spending time in there, so I joined her and read some books with her together. While we were in there reading together, Chris stood from the outside of the room, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows, he snapped several photos of us reading together to “capture the moment” as he always likes to do. Chris loves taking candid photos, especially ones that we are unaware of, or that can frankly be unflattering (he contests this, but what does he not contest that I say?!). Suddenly, one of the librarians comes into the children’s reading room and says hi to Kaia and me.
“Hi! So sorry to bother you,” the librarian began, smiling awkwardly. “I just wanted to ask: do you know that man there in the blue hoodie? He has been taking some photos of you, and I just wanted to make sure you were associated with him?”
I immediately started grinning. Chris can be so ridiculous sometimes, and he gives “zero shits” what other people think about his behavior. But to a regular bystander who has no idea we are together, his behavior can seem super stalker-like and weird, maybe even borderline “inappropriate”!
“No worries,” I immediately reassured her. “He’s my husband. He just likes to capture the moment!”
We both started laughing.
“Oh, thank goodness!” The librarian responded. “I just wanted to make sure we didn’t have an awkward situation on our hands and I didn’t need to call security! Hope you all enjoy!” And she left the room.
And there, you have it, my friends: This is just one of many endless examples of what a weirdo husband I have and what a weirdo dad Kaia has.